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Based on Northern dialects, the official language is widely spoken in the People's Republic of China. Mandarin (‘Putonghua’, i.e. ‘common tongue’ in Chinese) is taught at school and all provinces and towns have television broadcasts in this language. The common Chinese language is not artificially created, but rather it is based on Northern, primarily Beijing dialects. The fact that close to 70 percent of the country’s population already speaks one of the Northern dialects that differs only slightly from Putonghua played an important part in making this particular language variation the country’s official language in 1909. The official language, referred to by the Western world as Mandarin Chinese or simply Mandarin, is spoken by practically everyone in the country. It is understood and used in Taiwan and Singapore, but in recent years its use has also become widespread in Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong.